Yes, I know. I’m a few days late with this 2019 travel report.
It’s been a busy few weeks here in Belgium, but I couldn’t resist writing another article like the one I wrote last year. So here it is.
This is my 2019 travel overview.
Note: when I mention ‘blog post/video coming soon’, it might already be up and I forgot to update this post. So please take a look at my recent blog posts and my YouTube channel to stay up to date with all my content.
Note 2: to ensure that I can continue creating content, I’ve decided to make it easier for you to donate to Ars Currendi. Just click the link or scan the QR code below. Thank you for your support!
Click the links below to skip to the destinations you’re most interested in!
In February 2019, I took my third solo trip (after going to Berlin and Malta in 2017).
This time around, I went to the German capital Berlin (which is an awesome city for solo travellers, by the way).
I visited the Berlin essentials, like the DDR Museum, Brandenburger Tor and the Reichstag Building, on my first day. But after that, I went a bit more off-the-beaten-path. I went on a street art walking tour, hiked up a hill with a man-made Nazi station and explored an abandoned children’s hospital and an abandoned airport.
Video might be coming soon, but it might never come.
I’d say I’m sorry, but I don’t know if this video can deliver the quality that I want it to deliver.
All by myself, baby. It might seem strange to some of you, but I love travelling alone.
And, although there are plenty of reasons why solo travel sucks sometimes, I still think it’s one of the best ways to explore the world.
I went to Edinburgh in June to celebrate graduating from university.
So, we celebrated. (Pro tip: Dragonfly has the BEST cocktails.)
We also walked along the Royal Mile, took a ghost tour in Mary King’s Close, admired university buildings, climbed Arthur’s Seat and visited some museums, among other things.
Check the embedded map below to see more of what we did, ate and drank.
I’ll probably end up writing an article (or several articles) about Edinburgh in the near future.
I went to Edinburgh with my two best friends (@febelamkowski and @onanas_vandenameele).
Whelp. This is the big one.
In August, I went on a 3-week road trip in and around Rajasthan, India.
We definitely did too much to boil it all down to one paragraph, but I’ll try.
We admired countless palaces, forts and temples. After a wild camel ride, we slept in the desert. We zip-lined between hill forts and ridge tops. We took sleeper trains across the country. Indian ladies taught us to cook traditional Indian dishes. We went on a sunrise hike. We visited the Taj Mahal and the place where the Beatles spent three months. And, lastly, we took yoga classes and got Ayurvedic massages.
God, I want to go back.
I might write another article about India, but I’m not sure yet.
I went to India on a group tour, organised by Evelien from Joker (a Belgian travel agency).
My last trip of this summer was a quick weekend getaway to Lyon. I was going on a trip with my mom, and I wanted to surprise her by planning everything. She only found out where we were going at the airport.
Fun fact: I was originally planning to go to Budapest with her, but a few weeks before the trip, our flights were cancelled for no apparent reason. I had to find an alternative, and I chose Lyon.
We mostly walked around the city without having a real plan, and it was great.
I won’t be making a video of this trip, because I don’t have enough suitable video footage.
I went to Lyon with my mom, as previously mentioned.
Since this wasn’t our first time in London, we decided to combine some of the must-sees – like Oxford Street, Hyde Park and Notting Hill – with some more obscure locations – like Southwark, St Dunstan in the East Church and Leadenhall Market.
It’s always been one of my big dreams to experience the Big Smoke around Christmas. And this year, I made it.
Article coming soon.
I went to London with my parents and my sister.
So, this was my 2019 travel report.
Now, that only leaves me with my current travel plans for 2020. And it’s going to be a big one.
For starters, I’m going skiing in France with my parents.
Next up is a Joker reunion (you know, those people I went to India with) in Bucharest, Romania.
That will be followed by a visit to two friends who are doing an internship in Pamplona, Spain.
In the summer of 2020, I’ll be going on a kayak trip to Sweden, a road trip through the south of Norway, a sibling trip to Snowdonia NP (Wales) and a surprise trip with srprs.me to top it all off.
If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s this: 2020 is going to be a good one.
Although I travelled less in 2019 than I did in 2018, the same message applies.
I didn’t write this to make anyone jealous of ‘how I’m able to do this’ or to rub my travels in your faces.
If anything, I did it to show you that — if travel is your priority — you can do it.
And also, I think I might make these travel reports an annual thing. They’re fun and easy to write, and they give you a quick overview of where I’ve been and where I’m going next.
Again, I know that I missed the mark by a few days. But hey, what can you do?
Catch you guys on the flippity flip!
I’ve never done as much travelling in one year as I have in 2018. I travelled to three countries in Asia and four countries in Europe. Not only did I travel with friends and with family, I also travelled with a bunch of people I had never met before. This is a short overview of all the trips and crazy experiences I was fortunate enough to go through this year. This is my 2018 travel report.
Note: whenever I mention ‘blog posts/video coming soon’, it might already be up and I forgot to update this post. Check my recent blog posts and my YouTube channel to stay up to date with everything I do!
Click the links below to skip to the destinations you’re most interested in!
I’m not sure if everyone will count this as travelling, but I’m including it anyway. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.
In September 2017, I set off on my most ambitious project abroad to date. I spent four months studying abroad in Salamanca, Spain. Since I came back home in January 2018, I’m going to say it technically counts for my 2018 overview.
During my semester studying abroad, I met amazing people from all over the world (see Instagram picture below), I learned how to be independent and how to solve problems that I had never come across earlier. My Spanish also improved tremendously.
(The only reason I’m not on this picture is because it was taken the night before my first exam and I went home early to revise. See, Mom, I can be a responsible student.)
Studying abroad is usually something you do on your own. I was in a special situation, where I had a classmate who went on her Erasmus stay to the same city as me. We made friends together during the first few weeks, we were in class together and we studied together for our exams.
Big shout-out to Amy for helping me out with all kinds of problems I came across. <3
I went to Amsterdam in February.
One of the artists I had been following for a few years, Quinn XCII, was touring Europe in January and February 2018. When he dropped the announcement for the Europe leg of his The Story Of Us tour, I saw that the closest he would come to Belgium was Amsterdam. I messaged a few of my friends and one of them was willing to go to Amsterdam with me for a concert by an artist she had never heard of. What an absolute legend.
I combined this show with a visit to my sister, who was studying abroad in Amsterdam at the time. She was in the middle of her exams and we met up a few times to go for dinner and to explore the city.
In total, we ended up staying in Amsterdam for three days. We didn’t really visit any popular tourist hotspots, since my friend and I had both been in Amsterdam before (on the same school trip, by the way) and my sister obviously didn’t need to visit them anymore after having spent a few months there.
As I mentioned before, I went to Amsterdam with one of my best friends from high school and we met up with my sister a few times once we were there.
I went to La Plagne in February.
As I mentioned in my travel story, yearly ski trips have been an essential part of our family bonding since I was four years old. Before 2018, we hadn’t gone skiing for a while, but this year we went to La Plagne for a week of fun plowing through the snow.
We skied a lot. I reached a top speed of over 90 km/h (55 mph) rushing down a slope with nothing but two long sticks attached to my feet. I believe everyone should go skiing at some point, but that’s not the question here.
Also: I ate a lot of food. Just thought I’d throw that out there.
I went skiing in La Plagne with my parents and my sister, and we met up with a friend of my sister’s who was there with her family at the same time by chance.
I went to Lille in May.
After I came back from my four-month stay in Spain, I realised how much fun it was to be in an international organisation of exchange students and Erasmus students. While I was in Spain, I went on many trips that were organised by the local office of ESN (Erasmus Student Network).
Many of these trips can be seen in my Travel Videos playlist!
And so, when I was back in Belgium, I wanted to return the favour to the international student community. I contacted ESN Ghent (the city I’m currently studying in) to see if there was anything I could do for them, and it turns out there was. We agreed that I would join an upcoming ESN trip to Lille and take care of the pictures and video.
No sooner said than done, I found myself filming an international group of students I had never met before in a French city.
I went to Lille with two guys who volunteered at ESN Ghent and a group of 30-something international students who were out to explore the best Lille had to offer.
I went to Japan in August.
It’s been almost four months since I came back from Japan, but it still feels surreal to me that I actually went there and it was not a dream.
I spent two weeks in Japan and I visited Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Hiroshima, Itsukushima, Hakone, Shirakawa-go and Kanazawa. (More blog posts about Japan coming soon, by the way)
It was action-filled, ridiculous, exceptional, adventurous, unbelievable.
I can’t wait to go back and explore more of this crazy, crazy country.
I went to Japan with my parents and my sister. We also met up with a few people my dad knew from work when we were there.
I went to Bali in September.
After our two-week trip to Japan, my sister and I were still feeling energetic and ready for another trip. So we went to Bali for a week.
Admittedly, we had booked all this in advance, so it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment kind of deal.
While we were in Bali, we visited Ubud (Monkey Forest, rice terraces and Bali Swings), Canggu and Nusa Penida (Kelingking Beach, Broken Beach & Angel’s Billabong). We also ate. A lot. And we got a few massages. #thegoodlife
Bali might be on your bucket list, but you might want to revisit that. Here’s why Bali may or may not be worth a visit.
I went to Bali with my sister.
I went to Singapore in September.
Since I was only in Singapore for a 30-hour layover, I didn’t do a whole lot.
In our short available time period, we managed to check out the Supertree Grove at Gardens By The Bay (during the day AND at night), the Flower Dome, Cloud Forest, Little India and Chinatown.
We also admired a light show at the Supertree Grove (called the Garden Rhapsody) and one at the Marina waterfront. We experienced both shows within about half an hour of each other and it was the perfect end to a perfect trip.
Blog posts and video coming soon.
I went to Singapore with my sister, after our visits to Japan and Bali.
I went to Slovenia in September.
We arrived in Ljubljana, where we stayed for two days and mostly wandered around its quaint streets and neighbourhoods and discovering everything the Slovenian capital had to offer. Some recommendations: a stroll along the Ljubljanica river, Dragon Bridge, Preseren Square and Ljubljana Castle.
After two days in the capital, we took a bus to Bled, where we stayed in an Airbnb located at about ten minutes of Lake Bled. Also, I accidentally walked all the way around the lake on our last day. But that’s a story for later.
Related: get €30 off your first Airbnb booking here.
From Bled, we also went on a day trip to Vintgar Gorge. It was extremely tiring since the hike up there took us a lot longer than we had anticipated, but it was totally worth it. The views were gorge-ous. (I’m so sorry.)
Blog posts and video coming soon.
I went to Slovenia with one of my best friends from school (who is also an avid world traveller and one of the biggest fans of this blog, by the way).
This 2018 travel report wasn’t just meant to make anyone reading this jealous of how much I travelled. It was meant to show you that anyone can travel. If I, a full-time university student, can go on seven trips in one year, there’s no reason for you not to be able to do the same thing.
I’m not rich. I don’t have more time than you do. But I do make travel a priority.
As a travel blogger, writing a travel report like this is like a photographer making a photo album. In the future, I’ll be able to look back at this post and relive everything I experienced in 2018.
All I’m trying to say here is that it doesn’t always have to be a big, fancy trip. You can go to a city one hour away from your hometown and discover things you had never seen before.
Travelling is not about collecting trophies from the most extreme destinations across the world. It’s about experiencing life and living your dreams.
Here’s to travelling more than you think you can in 2019. Let’s make this the best year of our lives.
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